Once upon a time there was a Treasurer who was very, very concerned about delivering a surplus. But that was in another galaxy far, far away.
In Australia we have Joe Hockey. Who has “spending” under control now, but there’s still more to be done. The deficit is much larger than it was under the last Swan Budget, but he has the solution. We need to give tax cuts to those on the top rate because if we don’t, they may stop working.
I know, I know, some of you are going to wonder how reducing revenue will help the Budget get back into the black, but the Liberals have the answer to that one: Quick, bomb Syria.
In case you persist and say, how are you going to pay for the tax cuts, the Liberals can calmly point out that they stopped the boats.
When you ask what’s that got to do with the fact that reducing revenue will actually put the Budget further into the red, you’ll be reminded that it was Labor that insisted on wasting money on things like women’s refuges when a simple ad campaign is all that’s needed to stop domestic violence.
If you give up and say that, well, a Budget Deficit is probably a good thing because it’ll stimulate the economy, you’ll be told that it’s thinking like that which caused Australia to be in such a mess and that things have to be paid for, and that’s something that the Left don’t understand.
And the tax cuts will be paid for with the reduction in spending that the Liberals have achieved. So said Assistant Treasurer Josh Frydenburg, so don’t you worry at all.
A surplus is just around the corner. Like the tax cuts.
Which can only happen after the election. Although Joe wasn’t very specific about which election. It’s certainly not the Canning By-election. It may be the one next year. Or the one after that. Or when they actually get round to having one in North Korea. But definitely after an election and not in the next Budget.
But you can be sure that it’ll happen because the Liberals are a party that cuts tax. Take the GST. They’ve just cut the figure at which you have to pay it on overseas goods from $1000 to zero. If that’s not a tax cut, what is?
And they’re talking about making it 15% rather than 10%. But that’s not a new tax. It’s just an increase of an old one. And it’s not really an increase because we’re about to bomb Syria and, as we said before the previous election, personal income tax needs to come down and the boats need to be stopped so that we can have jobs and growth.
Income tax, you see, is a disincentive to work. And it’s only by reducing income tax that we’ll encourage people to work extra hours.
Because we want people to work extra hours. Not to go home to their families. We don’t want to share the jobs around and have two people working twenty-five hours. No, we’d rather remove the tax disincentive so that one person can work fifty hours and the other one doesn’t have a job.
Of course, not all jobs work that way.
With some jobs, you couldn’t find a way of giving a person’s overtime to somebody else. And, of course, with jobs like this all overtime is voluntary. Nobody ever gets forced to work extra hours. With all jobs, your boss comes to you and asks what hours you want to work, and because of the high income tax rates, lots of people just say that not only do they want no overtime, but it’s not really worth coming in after Thursday lunchtime so just dock my pay and I’ll see you Monday.
And with other jobs, well, they’re just high paying ones where you work as much as needed to get the work done. You know, like being in charge of the NBN which thanks to the Liberals is going to come in on time and under budget. Well, sooner than Labor’s and whatever the eventual cost Labor’s would have cost more and not used those state-of-the-art copper wires. Anyway, high rates of tax – that’s the reason I haven’t ever taken on a job paying in excess of a million a year – I’d be losing half of it to the government.
Yep, this is why companies have such trouble finding CEOs, nobody wants to earn that sort of money because they’ll have to pay so much tax.
As for people earning money through investments, well, because of the high tax rates most of them have decided to simply bury it in the backyards because they don’t want to earn a single dollar that might cost them 47 cents in tax.
Although one wonders why Joe’s wife has a place in Canberra when she’s so well off that surely the tax rate must be a disincentive to her charging him rent.
Whatever, personal tax rates are a disincentive to work.
Cutting penalty rates on the other hand is not a disincentive to people working at all.
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